Non-toxic appointment

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

10/17/07, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 8:43 PM CET

The process of appointing an executive director of the newly created European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is a painfully drawn out affair.Geert Dancet, who was previously head of the unit in the European Commission’s enterprise department dealing with REACH, the chemicals legislation, has been the acting executive director of the agency since it was set up in June. The working assumption has been that in due course Dancet would become the permanent director. At least, that was his assumption: he moved his children with him to Helsinki.Still, he must have breathed a sigh of relief yesterday (17 October) when the ECHA board announced that he was its favoured candidate who should go forward for a public hearing at the European Parliament. A final decision will be announced on 17 December.Yesterday’s announcement came down to a choice between Dancet and Anne Lambert, the UK’s deputy permanent representative to the EU. She has held that post since January 2003, so has served the customary four years plus a one-year extension. Now the Foreign Office is looking to move her on: last week selection interviews were held for her replacement. So Lambert is in danger of being left high and dry. Her candidacy for the ECHA post would have required a gamble from the ECHA board. She got her hands dirty in the UK’s department of industry as head of the team working on the rescue of British Energy, the company that ended up with the UK’s nuclear power stations. And in 1998-2002, she was deputy director-general of the UK’s telecoms regulator. But she has not specialised in chemicals policy in the same way as Dancet, who has been working on chemicals since 2000. He is the low-risk option.

There is something splendidly parochial about the state-aid investigation launched last week by the European Commission’s competition department into JC Decaux, a French advertising company. The question …